If anything is named properly in the film industry, the cheese plate is a cup of milk shy of being perfect. Named for the numerous holes all over the surface, the cheese plate is an integral part of filmmaking. While some might think of it as purely a grip item, the Camera Department relies on variations … Continued

Drones are pretty cool. We covered the new Solo from 3DRobotics earlier and how they’re separating themselves from the pack. Well, after a few years of talking about this, it is officially happening. Drone registration is now a real thing, starting on December 21st. No matter if your craft is a brand new Solo from 3DR, a … Continued

If you haven’t been floored yet by the aerial cinematography coming out of drone craft, just spend a few minutes googling. The kind of sweeping establishing shots of cities, buildings and naturescapes we’re seeing were seemingly just yesterday the exclusive domain of large expensive cranes, city permits and police-enforced street closures. There are a lot … Continued

If you’re used to previewing your video using the on-board camera LCD, you’re probably also used to the headaches of soft focus when you get the footage to post. Not to mention the giant handprint in what was supposed to be the money shot of the glass table. This things just don’t show up on … Continued

Color consistency has always been a problem for film and video. Thankfully we’ve graduated from the analog days of playing with a genlock, waveform and vectorscope to dial in color bars. But it’s still a challenge to ensure that what you see in post is what the DP was looking at on set. The “traditional” … Continued

Back in the 20th century drive choice was a little simpler: hard or floppy. These days when it comes to hard drives, things aren’t so easy to figure out. You have choices between spinning platter and SSD, 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm, burst and sustain transfer rates, not to mention JBODs and RAIDs with their … Continued

As part of our efforts to further the art of moviemaking, we’re collaborating with our partners at moviola.com to offer you entries from their visual glossary of terms here on the Filmtools’ blog. If you’re not familiar with it, the moviola.com Visual Glossary of Terms is designed to demystify key filmmaking concepts by explaining them in … Continued

When you first catch the DSLR filmmaking bug every penny goes to the best gear you can afford. But very quickly you come to discover that you need somewhere to put it. Somewhere portable. And somewhere between asking your significant other to nurse your favorite lens in their lap and discovering that you forgot to … Continued

Working with electricity isn’t all that hard. It’s just that if you get it wrong things tend to melt, catch fire and blow up. So it pays to have basic knowledge of electrical before you put your life–and your crew’s lives–on the line. The easiest and most valuable lesson you can learn is to calculate how … Continued

Fiilex is poised to become a leading force in LED production lighting. With some of the highest TLCI ratings in the industry, Fiilex lights (pronounced like the cat) are finally delivering on the promise of LED for consistent color at any dimmer setting. While they’re becoming known for their versatile P360EX and the more powerful Q1000, … Continued